


One Day

by butterflybooks



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Post Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 04:18:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3105425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterflybooks/pseuds/butterflybooks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter had said: I personally think you’ll pull through this with a minimum of Post-Traumatic Stress.</p>
<p>And that was the problem, really, wasn’t it? Peter had said. Like she didn’t even get a say in her own recovery.</p>
<p>He’d been wrong anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Day

**Author's Note:**

> So, I'm posting this because even though it is clearly never going to be finished properly, I'm pretty pleased with bits of it. If it feels like it ends abruptly that's why. So, far too late: a post season 2 reaction fic for Lydia. Completely disregards canon after that point.
> 
> Warnings for everything that happened to Lydia in season 2, mentions of death and swearing.

Peter had said: _I personally think you’ll pull through this with a minimum of Post-Traumatic Stress._

And that was the problem, really, wasn’t it? Peter had said. Like she didn’t even get a say in her own fucking recovery.

He’d been wrong anyway.

Unless the _minimum_ of Post-Traumatic Stress was waking up every night in a cold sweat, unless it was dreaming of his burnt, broken face so, so close… Unless it was still feeling his lips on hers like they’d scalded her - which was impossible because, god, they were so cold (how could anyone who’d burnt so such be so cold?)

Unless it was feeling unsafe… shaky in her own mind, her own body.

If that was the minimum of Post-Traumatic Stress, then everyone – including her new, patronising therapist who scribbled down things anyone with a pop-psychology degree could figure out, whilst giving her slow considering looks over the top of his glasses – could go fuck themselves.

She couldn’t even tell most people _why_ she felt this way. Because a new facet of her life now turned out to involve keeping secrets for people who had ignored and belittled her for months. So she couldn’t tell most people and the people she _could_ tell, well. Most were people she didn’t even _like_ , and the rest had too much shit of their own to deal with. She didn’t even know how she’d start. Peter Hale (the name still made her shudder) had broken into her head and her life and her body with such stealth that it didn’t even _feel_ broken into. It felt like something deep within her had been ripped open, like the core of her being had been exposed. And if she hadn’t been broken into then he could still be there, the hallucination, the dream that had been so very physical, a presence inside of her. She didn’t feel broken, she didn’t feel shattered, or any of the words she apparently should be feeling. They all sounded too delicate for what had happened to her. She hadn’t been shattered, she had been _gutted_. She hadn’t been broken, she had been _torn apart_. She had come undone.

Lydia Martin had always had it all, but she had known beauty would fade, popularity could wane, high school wasn’t going to last forever. The one thing she had always thought she would be able to count on was her mind. But it had been stolen into, picked over by a deranged psychopath and then abandoned for her to fix when he no longer had use of her.

It had been so easy. She had made it so easy.

A few years of disturbing nightmares.

He had said that too. It was probably an understatement.

~

Ms Morrell had mysteriously disappeared; Lydia has a theory but she’s keeping it to herself. She can’t say why; it could be as revenge – which she has never claimed to be above – for being kept in the dark for all those months. It could be because she’s not sure of it, after all, how could she possibly know that Ms Morrell was involved in the supernatural? Or it could be that for all that Ms Morrell was obviously hopelessly under qualified in the field of psychology – and she thinks in French as well, although Lydia does acknowledge that her expectations might be a little higher than most – Lydia had actually… not warmed to her exactly, but got the impression that for all her lack of qualifications, Ms Morrell was qualified in something. And that something might save people’s lives.

It’s not all about the moment she’d looked across one of those damned ink spots and said, “I would have said wolf.” But Lydia would be lying if she said it isn’t a big part of it.

Anyway, Ms Morrell is gone and Lydia has a new therapist. She doesn’t like him but it’s not personal. She doesn’t trust him but she’s not really feeling the whole trust thing with most people at the moment. She doesn’t want to talk to him about anything but even if she did she wouldn’t be able to.

There are reasons why ‘her recovery is not proceeding at the expected rate’ thank you very much.

“How are you feeling, Lydia?”

She doesn’t roll her eyes because she thinks if she keeps doing that she might get eyeball strain. She levels him with a look instead and says, in the voice she mainly uses to let people know she notices everything about their bullshit, “Fine.”

“Is there anything you would like to talk about today?”

Good god, is he even trying to do his job?

She has 55 minutes left in here. That’s 3300 seconds. Which is precisely 3299 seconds too long.

“Not in particular,” she answers.

The wall is a dull shade of beige and Mr Evans needs to rethink his adoration for plaid shirts and sweater vests. The clock seems very loud.

“Are you still having nightmares?”

Every single night.

“Not as much.”

“Would you like to talk about them?”

_Perhaps you’d like to know how my skin crawls when I think of him. How my heart jumps when I see floorboards, or the full moon or that damn purple flower. Perhaps you’d like to know how I wake up in a cold sweat every night. Perhaps you want to know how scared I still am and how angry that he has this power over me. He shouldn’t have any power over me. He’s had enough._

She shakes her head.

(The rest of the session passes in a blur of pleasantries and therapy exercises and when she goes home she can still hear his voice in her ear.)

~

They’re taking things slow; it’s not something they ever thought of the first time around.

They haven’t had sex yet, but sometimes she goes to his house (once) or he goes to hers (often) and they sleep together. Just sleep. Or hold each other with their eyes wide open as dawn slowly creeps upon them.

They talk about things they only ever briefly touched upon before. His parents, her parents, why things are important to them and why things aren’t. How she’s going to win the Field medal for mathematics and he has no clue what he wants to do past high school.

(Jackson is a werewolf but it has only really solved the problem created by the desire in the first place. There are empty spaces in his life and he doesn’t know how to fill them. Lydia doesn’t understand but she holds him and sometimes that’s enough.)

When she is with him she feels safe and strong. It’s oddly freeing, to have someone relying on her instead of trying to fix her.

(She’s not _broken_ , dammit. Why are none of them _listening_?)

Because Jackson was taken over too. His mind and his body controlled for someone else’s means. He’s been made vulnerable and she thinks it will make him more careful with strength. She hopes it will. He’s learning control slowly but surely because he understands the importance and she hasn’t seen him shift without his consent yet.

“Do you remember?” He asks abruptly, when she is lying on his chest, moonlight (but not too much) streaming through the window. “What happened to you, do you remember?”

Lydia’s breath doesn’t catch because she is above such obvious physiological responses, but there is a pause as she considers. She has given him the bare bones of what happened to her; even as they try and learn each other again they have skirted around the supernatural. Yet somehow she thinks he has a better idea of what happened than anyone else. She doesn’t think it’s because he knows her better, or any cliché like that, but Jackson has become quieter, more measured. More empathetic in how he views others (or maybe just her. Which she doesn’t object to – bringing someone back from the dead should give you _some_ perks). He has matured and it makes her ache for the cocky boy he once was. She aches for the girl she once was as well. She is sad for their past relationship even as they move forward to a better, more honest one, because their relationship was what it should have been; they are too mature now. They have been made too mature.

“Every second,” she answers, because she won’t lie to him about this. “Do you?” she asks, because turnabout’s fair play.

There is a beat. “No.”

And it’s… not a lie. But it’s also not the truth.

She lets it slide. He has blood on his hands and she doesn’t think she’ll ever really understand what that’s like. She did things she didn’t want to but no one _died_.

_They almost did. He almost did._

She burrows closer and his arms come up around her. He grips too tight, but she knows it’s not as tight as he could (werewolf), so she lets him hold her with enough pressure so that they both know the other’s there.

It not much (not healing, not _fixed_ ) but it’s enough for now.

It brings them to another dawn.

~

School is – in a psychological twist that would be surprising to most people – something of a saving grace. It’s a relief to walk into class and rely on formulae and words to get her through the hour. It’s a mixture of blessed normality and something that feels like pot luck that the corridors of people still part as she walks through (she still feels like she’s getting away with something; like one day they’ll figure out that she’s not… that she’s not-). The corridors part and she walks through like a queen, because for all they know that’s what she is.

It makes her laugh sometimes. It must look like nothing’s changed; sure, she ran through the woods naked and Jackson broke up with her. But she got over the woods thing in the popularity stakes weeks ago and her and Jackson are back together. She’s Lydia Martin, top of the class, a natural leader, dating the lacrosse captain… and every day she makes it through without someone else in her mind feels like a victory. Every time she doesn’t flinch when someone walks into a classroom. Every night she gets through without screaming.

It’s bizarre, because Jackson died on the lacrosse field-

(and then again in a warehouse but no one will ever talk about it)

-and then he came back. Lydia doesn’t know if the respect was there all along or is due to some weird messiah complex their school might have. And now they sit with Scott, the pack and Stiles. They make an odd band, but Lydia’s starting to find she doesn’t care.

She is irritated by Scott and Isaac – in what she likes to think is a fond sort of way – begrudgingly admiring of Erica, she _likes_ Boyd and Stiles is… well, she’s sort of grown accustomed. He’s grown quieter in the last few weeks, but that still means he talks more than any of the others put together.

Their table is full of chatter and when Isaac mentions Peter someone steps on his foot and they go back to talking about… whatever it is they were talking about before.

Lydia is trying to stay out of whatever werewolf shit is going on, beyond what affects Jackson, but she knows there’s a pack of alphas and possibly a werewolf geriatric who wants them dead somewhere around.

(Peter Hale is with the pack and although no one seems happy about it, no one’s doing anything either.)

~

Lydia wakes up with a gasp but not a scream. Screaming has proved far too much trouble. Her mother isn’t generally that attentive, but even she comes running at the sound of her child screaming.

The sounds and colours of her dream rush past her and she closes her eyes against the assault. A snatch of conversation, her own scream, burned flesh, a whisper of dank breath against her ear… She lets out a half sob, half gasp as she squeezes her eyes shut.

She walks over to the mirror and – as if it’s captured her – stares at herself for a long moment. Her face is pale and there are dark shadows under her eyes -

~

Allison is one of the people she has refrained from discussing anything with because she has too much shit of her own to be dealing with. Lydia doesn’t know all the details but she knows her mom committed suicide and then Allison went a little overboard on revenge. Lydia doesn’t know a thing about parents dying (abandonment, emotional manipulation sure, but not _dying_ ) so it’s not like she can judge, besides there’s no love lost between her and any of the Hales.

(She has let Derek off because he is at least _helping_ Jackson learn control, but that doesn’t mean she’s forgotten what he did to him.

When she considers what she’d be willing to do to Peter Hale she feels like she should scare herself, but she is so done with being scared.)

So when she’s had a decent day, she goes to Allison’s house… because Allison is the truest friend she’s ever had and she feels like she kind of needs her right now; she feels selfish, but it’s not like she’s going to cry on her shoulder she just wants to sit in a room with her and feel safe.

She stands in front of the house for a long time – Allison hasn’t been in school for a while, which Lydia guesses is a good thing and probably her father’s idea.

“Lydia,” Mr Argent comes out the front door, sock-footed and tired-eyed. “Would you like to come in?”

Lydia remembers a time when she had thrown herself down on a bed and flirted with Chris Argent just because she could; it feels a world away, but – because this is a good day – not a whole person away. She’s not completely different because, well. She still _would_.

She presses her lips together and nods.

“Allison’s upstairs,” he says.

Allison is at her desk on her computer when she walks in without knocking. She throws a bag down on her bed. Allison looks up; she doesn’t just look tired, she looks washed out and raw. Lydia wants to hug her, but she sees the sharp angle of her shoulders and waits.

“Hi,” Allison says.

“Hey.”

They look at each other for a moment and then Allison relaxes, gets up from her desk and comes over. The sharp angles are gone so Lydia reaches out and finds the hug returned. She doesn’t know if they were ever the hugging type of friends, but she hasn’t felt this kind of easy comfort with anyone except Jackson. Neither of them cry, probably because neither have the energy anymore, but they hold each other and they know and it’s enough.

They pull away eventually and Lydia looks at Allison; her dark hair is scraped back and she looks like she hasn’t slept in days; her clothes are ratty and old, but Lydia masterfully manages to refrain from comment.

Neither of them say, _I’m sorry_ and neither of them ask _so how are you feeling?_ Instead Allison says, the relief and gratitude in her voice a little too much for the lightness of the comment, “Thank god you’ve come. I’ve been going out of my mind.”

“So I can see,” Lydia says, gesturing at the computer screen. “You know Facebook stalking is an amateur method.”

“I needed to see what you were all doing,” Allison says, sitting down on the bed. Lydia sits next to her, lacing their fingers together. The unsaid is obvious, and not something Lydia can point out without feeling like a hypocrite: _without_ talking _to any of us?_

“Yeah,” says Lydia. She looks around the room and asks, in what is trying to be a non-judgemental tone. “Have you been outside this room recently?”

“Yes,” Allison says quickly, then smiles wryly. “Mainly downstairs, though. Dad’s been… around. We’re dealing.”

Lydia is dealing. Jackson is dealing. Lydia is kind of _sick_ of dealing.

“Look, Allison. I don’t know what you’re going through. And I don’t pretend to, but it kind of seems like this whole problem started because of people not talking to each other. Well, OK, not all of it. Most of my problems anyway-” She holds up a hand to stop Allison’s apology. “I’m past it. Mostly not your fault anyway,” and that might be a bit generous, but Lydia is willing to cut Allison some slack. “So stop  _dealing_. Or whatever this lone wolf shit everyone seems to keep pulling is. And that-” she pauses. “Was not supposed to be a pun.”

Allison laughs, a little weakly, but it’s real enough.

“Anyway. You don’t have to talk to me. Or anyone, if you don’t want to, but be _with_ people. Don’t hide yourself away because you think this is something you _should_ deal with alone. Because it’s not.”

Oh, shit. Lydia is a hypocrite.

There is a long silence, in which Lydia watches Allison and Allison watches as her own fingers pick at the seams of her covers. When she eventually speaks, it’s slow – as if it’s a physical effort to get these words out. “I feel… like I’m in this deep dark pit. And that no matter how much I scream or yell I can only hear the echoes of life. I’ve felt-” Allison takes a deep, shuddering breath and Lydia places a hand on her back, feels her ribcage expanding jerkily under her palm. “I remember going to the hospital and hearing the words and ever since then nothing has felt real and I think if I stay here long enough nothing ever will.” Allison is crying now and sobs rack her small frame. Lydia knows by now that small does not equal fragile but she feels like wrapping Allison in her arms anyway, and what makes her think she can support Allison when-

No, she cuts that thought off. She can support Allison because she has to.

“And I don’t know whether I want that or whether I don’t, but it feels safer and- I don’t know what to do.”

“That’s OK, I-” Lydia takes a deep breath. But she continues because this is Allison, and she had been perfectly happy before Allison came along; she had been fake without losing herself and she had been queen of the school. But Allison had been her only friend when she eventually came along, and she had made her want to be better. She had seen her when no one – not her parents, not Jackson – else had, but she hadn’t tried to change her. She had waited. “I know what it’s like to feel reality slipping away. I know what it’s like when no one will listen. So, Allison?”

Allison looks to her. “Yes?”

“No one’s going to pull you out of that pit. You have to do that yourself. But I’m here, and I think that first step is getting out of this room. Actually,” Lydia considers. “The first step is taking a shower, because honey,” she takes a strand of Allison’s hair in her fingers and makes a face.

Allison chokes out a laugh.

“So. Go.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Lydia smiles to herself and by the time Allison is out the shower, she has an outfit picked out for her. Because she is a good friend and Allison needs fashion advice so that Lydia won’t have the urge to gouge her eyes out.

It feels nice. It feels normal.

~

They go to the woods. Where else?

They walk through until they reach a clearing. The leaves crunch underfoot and there are noises all around, but neither of them have anything to fear from the dark anymore.

Lydia remembers coming out here to puzzle out Peter Hale, remembers being barefoot and vulnerable, doesn’t remember running through the woods naked and vulnerable. The air smells woodsy and feels fresh in a way nothing else has.

Allison walks up to a tree, runs a hand over the bark and smiles a shadow of that daring Allison smile. She hikes up a foot, scrabbles with her hands and climbs the bark, finding foot and handholds god knows how. Lydia watches as she reaches the lowest branch – still a good way off the ground – crawls along it and abruptly flips herself so she hangs by her legs upside down.

Lydia grins; she looks free. Lydia looks around at the clearing and makes a quick decision. Allison frowns at her as she shucks off her shoes and starts kicking up the leaves.

Lydia came through here and she was vulnerable but that doesn’t make her weak. Kicking up leaves doesn’t make her strong, but it makes her unafraid. She laughs until Allison joins in as the leaves tangle in the air.

~

Ms Morrell and Deaton have come back.

No one knows where they went or what they were doing, but there’s a freezer unit that no one’s allowed to open in the animal rescue shelter and Gerard will no longer be a problem.

First, Lydia goes to see Ms Morrell. She dumps her bag on the chair and stands as she says, “He was in my mind.”

Ms Morrell regards her with a considering look and after a pause replies, “I know.”

And Lydia… can almost let out a breath, but she has another question. “Can I make sure that never happens again?”

If Lydia was the type to read into minute facial expressions she would have sworn Ms Morrell was smiling. “Yes. We can.”

“Good,” Lydia says and then pauses, looking round the room. She smiles and then announces: “I am done with therapy.”

She definitely sees a smile.

Then she turns, flips her hair and sails out the room. The corridors part and she feels nothing like a fraud.

~

As it happens, Deaton teaches her to guard her mind and Ms Morrell teaches her self-defence of a different sort. She will need them both.

~

There is a place by the water where she doesn't have to think about anythng. That morning she woke up after four hours of uninterrupted sleep. Then she went to do self-defence training with Ms Morrell. She's getting better. Allison's coming to meet her in a moment.

(One day she will look into Peter’s eyes. And he will say _Lydia, darling. I was the only one who told you the truth._

And she will think: _yes, you were. And this is your reward._

And then she will drive a dagger tipped with wolfsbane straight into his heart. And this time she will be _sure_ that he has no back-up plan.

But today is not that day.)

Lydia dangles her feet in the water, and breathes.


End file.
